Large-Group Action Research

Action research is generally aimed at enabling people to address their shared concerns in a collaborative and learningful manner. Shared concerns or challenges are, however, not always confined within organizational boundaries or small groups. Ambitions to achieve impact on a larger scale than the single organization and the very nature of the shared concerns of people both lead us to address action research in large groups.

Firstly, it is futile to achieve large-scale change by changing the smaller units one after the other, due to the sheer magnitude of the task. For instance, the need to improve the innovative capacities of a region's companies may not be achieved by changing the single companies one by one. There is also no direct diffusion of learning and change from one or a few cases to many cases, neither directly between practitioners without mediating processes nor via general theory. Hence, we cannot rely on theory production alone or on word of mouth to create a societal or large-system impact. Action research therefore needs to encompass learning mechanisms, change and knowledge production that reflect the whole system that needs changing.

Secondly, the shared concerns and the problems or challenges facing people and communities are often of such a complex nature that they call for participation of a larger stakeholder set in order to be improved upon. Such issues may often be perceived as part of community or regional development, such as youth crime, unemployment, environmental issues, racial conflict, urban regeneration, industrial development, the tourist attractiveness of a location and so on.

In this entry, addressing ‘large groups' is taken to imply efforts that reach beyond the single organization or the small group with its face-to-face relationships. The entry will emphasize the challenges of doing action research in large groups, including the importance of understanding the system and who is in it, establishing a legitimate position for the researchers and organizing dialogical processes that lead to joint action.